Affiliate data standards

This week, I moderated a panel that was focused on the ultimate affiliate toolkit at the iGaming Club by AffPapa in Malaga.  

It featured 3 amazing panelists that all manage different products and have different experiences in the iGaming affiliate space.

These people are:

• Michael Filletti , Co-Founder of Routy

• Artyom Matevosyan , Senior sales manager of PartnerMatrix

• Dalibor Raphael Spasikj, Head of Operations at MatchingVisions.com™

In the panel we covered a lot of topics that were seemingly leading towards an unexpected twist..

PS quick shoutout to newsletter sponsors StatsDrone and FTDx.io.

That happened in the Q&A period of the panel when Clemence Dujardin , CEO of MyAffiliates. It was off the back of Joe Hatch’s question on affiliate data standards.

Her question was direct and I’m paraphrasing on the exact wording but it had to do with the idea of what do we think about affiliate program trying to adhere to a hypothetical affiliate data standards?

This topic came up as we were talking throughout the panel about affiliate data and what standards don’t exist and what we would like to see.

That question had great answers from the 3 panelists and I did jump in a little bit. 

I’d like to re-ask this question to the 3 panelists and hope there is a recording but one thing was clear. We all had different ideas and approaches but we all had some consensus about something should we done and we know we can make things better.

I’m going to give my very quick answer to this question.

Trying to build data standards in affiliate marketing in iGaming isn’t a new concept. It was attempted back in 2018 with NetRefer doing a collaboration with Better Collective, Game Lounge, Raketech and Catena Media. 

I think the attempt back then was commendable but I believe it revolved around NetRefer’s definition of how they structured their data. My quick opinion is that it is impossible to ask companies like MyAffiliates, Income Access, A Paysafe Experience , Cellxpert or PartnerMatrix to change their entire product. 

New products are being introduced and that doesn’t even include blockchain which Dalibor Spasikj highlighted as just one example of how things could be made better in affiliate marketing.

So my short answer is this.

We don’t know what good looks like until someone is willing to take a risk to build it. As far as I’m concerned, nobody owns any intellectual property when it comes to basic tracking tech. 

At the end of the day, we are simply dealing with data. Except it is financial data so this is very important to get it right.

I think what should be done in a new framework for affiliate data standards is feedback from all stakeholders in our beloved affiliate marketing space. Affiliates, operators, affiliate networks, affiliate platform providers and all other tools that indirectly affect us.

We need clear definitions of how every software has labeled their KPIs and to know how they structure their data so we can compare across multiple platforms. 

We need guidance to help any affiliate program or affiliate program software to know what could be done to make things better than they are today. 

The affiliate data standard in my eyes isn’t a ‘my way or the highway approach’ but a collaborative approach that involves more than 1 affiliate program software.

It would also involve all us data aggregators from StatsDrone, to Routy, to VOONIX.NET and the other ones coming into the market. That includes Affcollect as well.

Affiliate networks will be another important feedback mechanism that will include Matching Visions, Kiickr, AffiliationCloud by Raketech, Confido Network , AffiliationSPACE and more. 

As we head towards a new era of better data transparency and real-time streaming of affiliate data, we have to be ready for it and encourage each other to make things better.